Top Ten Tuesday: scifi movies

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. We usually talk about a bookish topic, but this week we’re talking movies – so in honour of SciFi Month, I’m going to look at my favourite SF flicks. This may be the hardest Top Ten I’ve ever written.

Looking through my collection, I realised that I was going to start with over 50 movies that hold a special place in my heart. I started by culling fantasy films – that’s a topic for another day – and only including one film from any given franchise… and ended up with three dozen.

I started performing intellectual and emotional contortions, trying to find ways to shorten the list. I even flirted with the idea of a Top Ten Types of SF Movie (with multiple examples of each), but in the end, I’ve decided I just need to search my soul.

So, if I’m super strict, the Top Ten SF films that hold the dearest places in my heart are:

I fell in love with The Abyss the first time I saw it on VHS, back when I was less critical and more sentimental. Who am I kidding? Sure, the Navy SEALs and blue collar schtick is thin, but I still can’t resist the heart and hope that this displays. See what we are, it says. We can do better.

Classy, clever, a visual feast from the very opening shot, Inception is – for me – Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece to date. From the jaw-dropping effects to the meticulous attention to detail (“I don’t like trains”), brilliant score and ambiguous ending, I find it hard to fault.

Jurassic Park was the first film I ever saw twice at the cinema. I grew up reading books about dinosaurs; wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. The first glimpse of brachiosaurs with John Williams score swelling to crescendo still moves me to tears. We won’t talk about the sequels, ok?

There are many ways to be subversive. Fury Road embraces most of them: a slick, trigger-happy blockbuster about battling patriarchal despots, which allows a one-armed warrior woman to upstage its eponymous hero. And has a bloke on bungees playing a flaming guitar. Embrace madness.

Stylish as hell, The Matrix bent a few brains, brought wire fu to Hollywood, and made Elrond a bad-ass. I loved it from the moment Trinity shows us how it’s done (“Get up, Trinity“) and it still gives me thrills. Don’t mention the sequels.

I love Monsters for not being a monster movie. Against all the odds (just 2 actors and 3 crew on a 3-week road trip with no script or professional gear), it’s stunning. It’s understated, intimate, and – if you’re paying attention – heart breaking. Blockbusters be warned: money can’t buy excellence.

Guilty pleasure time. My inner child nearly bounced out of my skin when I first saw Pacific Rim. It’s big and brash and stupid. Guillermo del Toro is a master of irresistible art direction and by the time you add in a cast that oozes charisma, Idris Elba cancelling the apocalypse, and some stupid Aussies being really stupid, I never stood a chance.

I saw Serenity before I saw Firefly and it converted me on the spot. It starts and ends with love, and in between serves up stubborn resistance to an authoritarian government that claims the moral high ground whilst devaluing its own humanity. It’s probably time for a re-watch.

When I say Star Wars, I mostly mean Episodes IV and VII. Do I love it for being galactic fantasy with space wizards, princesses and pirates? Or for being another fight the system epic about opposing evil with little more than loyalty and hope? Yes. I can’t wait to see Rogue One.

Super 8 stole my heart by creeping in disguised as Spielberg, then laid down a wall-to-wall charm offensive with plucky kids and musical crescendoes. It champions empathy and forgiveness, and I may find it naive in days to come (“Bad things happen. But we can still live”), but I take endless delight in the script (and those production values).

A beautiful, touching work of genius, WALL-E couldn’t have been made by anyone but Pixar. A kid’s movie that delivers scathing commentary on consumerism and has no dialogue for the first 20-odd minutes? It took balls and hours of watching silent movies to pull this off – and a lot of heart.

And this is in spite of 28 Days Later being one of my all-time favourite films. For the purposes of this list, I’m considering it horror and letting it go.

This is in spite of the allure of perennial pulp favourites like Tremors and Lockout, that get endless re-watching in our household in spite of being objectively terrible. Truly, properly, terribly entertaining.

This is in spite of those intensely clever films that make me think or rage or swim with emotion like Ex Machina and Interstellar.

And yes, I know, that was a Top Eleven. I couldn’t handle the guilt when I realised I’d somehow forgotten Fury Road. Could you abandon Furiosa? Well, exactly. That’s why there’s always room for one more.

Especially if – at the heart of it – it’s a story about love, hope and respect. I’m really not very convincing in my regular claim to love apocalypse and dystopia, am I?

WALL-E is just all heart (so is Super 8. There is a scene near the end that I basically can’t watch without ALL THE TEARS from the feelings. And, uh, then there’s another one. My beloved puts that movie on and just smirks at me because he knows it will make me intensely happy and make me cry snot).

The reason I love Pacific Rim so much is that it’s a monster movie with a ton of heart and non-toxic masculinity. (This article is pretty much what convinced me to stop playing down my love for Pacific Rim.)

It also makes me think – every time – “Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a ninety-pound girl, ’cause I don’t think that’s ever gonna get old.” (And I take enormous delight in the facial expression Raleigh pulls when he’s doing an impression of Mako’s disgust at his performance on the mat)

Who am I kidding. I could sit hear and write ‘and then there’s the bit where’ pretty much all night. The Aussies. The seagull. Using a tanker as a club (which is utterly absurd and I don’t care). And and and.

Thank you for the article. It has made me intensely happy. I may sit here and grin all night. And then go rewatch Pacific Rim.

Thank you 🙂 Monsters is such a low-key movie – handheld, off-hand, all banter and verbal sniping and random remarks (no script) and quiet scenes of staring at the landscape – that it feels oddly real. It’s an odd couple bonding on a dangerous road trip, and I love it.

Yesssssss!! A couple of these were on my Sci-Fi Movies list as well. But I forgot about Wall-E… the whole family loves that movie, and it’s not uncommon for us to walk through the house and shout out “Waaaaaaallll-EeeeeeEEeee” and someone to answer “Eeeevvvvva!” while we try to do the modulation with our voices.

If you’ve got the hours to spend, the even-longer director’s cut of The Abyss is the way to go. The cinematic release works, but the director’s cut restores a key storyline that really writes the STOP BEING AN ASSHAT message in bold.

I think The abyss is great, just well acted and superb effects and emotional at times too. Jurassic Park- yeah. That brachiosaur moment always gets me too. Fury Road is amazing (love Furiosa) although I like The Road Warrior just a little better. And I need to see Pacific Rim!

I don’t watch a lot of sci-fi, but I really enjoy the genre. Super 8 is actually my favorite movie of all times! I love the atmosphere of it – kids trying to figure out weird things happening in their city and the problem itself. It is so interesting! I also love the soundtrack so much! There are a lot of great songs from the 80s/90s that I really enjoy listening.
Interestellar is very fascinating as well. I realize most of the sci-fi movies I do like are very focused on characters. I think that’s why I love them so much!

I didn’t think I would love Fury Road so much.. but I did. I never liked the old ones and found them boring.
Idris Elba is in Pacific Rim…? Why did I not know that? I better watch it pretty soon, he’s one of my favourite actors since THE WIRE.

My book copy of Jurassic Park just arrived in the post! I’m SO EXCITED to reread it (even if I’m slightly irritated that ‘second hand, very good condition’ is apparently now code for ‘creased to death’).

Yes, yes and yes. This is a great list for sharing with non-SF fans too, because it really shows the breadth of the genre – SF is such a broad genre that can take so many forms, so if you think you don’t like SF, it might simply be that you haven’t watched the right movie or read the right book yet!

When some friends asked me to go see an animated movie called “Wall-E” I accepted without too much enthusiasm, thinking that it would be something children would appreciate more. I could not have been more wrong: I totally *loved* it, and it both moved and amused me. And it’s one of the movies I love to rewatch now and then, with the same delight as that first time 🙂